“Is there any such thing as a zero down investment loan?”
no zero-down that I am aware of
the closest I came to ‘zero down’ was putting 20% down, getting an 80% first mortgage and then taking a 20% 2nd mortgage a few months later – within 3 months I had a very nice 4plex with none of my money invested
“Does a given income qualify me for more $$ for a loan for a multi family property?”
1 to 4 units is considered residential property and qualifies for those types of loans – as soon as you get the 5th unit you are talking about commercial property and the down payment is much higher (35%?)
live in one of the units and you can get owner-occupied financing which will be your lowest down payment
what’s cool about multi-unit is that you count some of the income from the rental units when you are qualifying for the loan – when I was buying multi-unit (1998-2002) lenders were counting 75% of the rental income towards the loan – I believe this percentage has dropped in the last year – different loan programs may accept more or less of the rental income
one challenge with multi-unit in San Diego is that a decent property in an OK location almost certainly requires a jumbo loan – jumbo loans have a higher interest rate – I think current cutoff for jumbo is around $650K
